In an age of expensive gasoline, will Pittsburgh regain some historic advantages?

It's a bit of a crazy question because there's almost no way the American economy will be better off. But it's likely our region's navigable rivers, freight rail system and relatively compact pre-war street grid will be assets other places would covet.

All the old Northeastern cities prominent at the turn of the last century -- "they're all gonna come back," says Matt Simmons, head of a big Houston energy investment banking firm.

On a scale of one to 10, how would he rate Pittsburgh's rivers as a future asset?

"Eleven,'' Mr. Simmons said.

I contacted him after a reader sent me a recent PowerPoint presentation by Mr. Simmons, "Peak Oil's Investment Implications."' It made no mention of Pittsburgh, but led to an obvious question:

If one could make bets on which companies would benefit as the price of oil soars, couldn't one do the same for metropolises?

In 2005, Mr. Simmons, 64, wrote a book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.'' He'd made a long trip to Saudi Arabia a couple of years before and came away believing "it is an unbelievable illusion that the Middle East is one big pool of oil.''

Just as U.S. oil production peaked in 1971, it's likely world oil production will peak soon -- if it hasn't already. World oil supply hit a record in May 2005, and the longer that mark stands, the more likely world supply has peaked, says Mr. Simmons.

He sees a time very soon when we'll have to ration gasoline. Just as it only took a weekend for lenders to drain Bear Stearns of its assets, he says, it could take only a few days to drain gasoline from the system. Motorists and service stations will hoard. "It literally is a run on the energy bank.''

A self-serve bank, at that.

You needn't fully buy Mr. Simmons' predictions. Oil deals are his business and it would benefit if rising prices bring massive investment, as the energy industry scrambles to get previously unreachable black gold. Don't expect that to be as cheap, he says. Some year soon, he contends, $100 a barrel will be remembered as a bargain.

Consumers already are cutting back, unable to afford as much gasoline as they once did. If a bank can suffer when it's too heavily leveraged, what happens to a nation that imports 60 percent of its oil?

It changes its transportation premises. Sprawling, auto-dependent metropolises of recent decades such as Charlotte and Phoenix might have a tougher time readjusting than Pittsburgh.

Moving freight by rail is cheaper than moving it by truck, but moving it by barge is cheaper yet. When fuel is expensive, Norfolk & Southern Railway's network of track in Western Pennsylvania looms large, and the rivers larger. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will need to do a massive dredging of the Ohio River to ease long river trips, Mr. Simmons predicts.

Only 6.2 percent of the seven-county region's workers were using public transit in 2000 -- but that was the eighth-highest percentage among America's 50 largest metro areas. That and the relatively high number of walking commuters (at least by American standards) will help Pittsburgh, Mr. Simmons said.

He also sees the schools of engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Penn State as vital assets for America's "war footing'' overhaul, which will create thousands of blue-collar jobs.

Obviously, there's no unanimity here and, even if Mr. Simmons is right, the price tag boggles the mind. The same morning he was telling me this, the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group held a news conference to push for the extension of light rail from Downtown to Oakland.

This is the same project that Allegheny County inexplicably killed in 1996, when Larry Dunn briefly held governmental reins. So it could be another 15 years before someone can ride the T from the South Hills to Oakland, or from the North Shore to Oakland. Both Washington and Harrisburg are dominated by suburban and rural interests far more interested in building highways.

Nobody knows how events will play out, but I'm reminded of how critics of the steel industry were written off as alarmists before its fall. Only in retrospect was the implosion fully grasped.

Not to be a nag, but America's economic model is to buy imported oil to drive alone to work and the mall to buy Asian goods so foreigners can lend us their dollars to finance two wars on the other side of the world while our debt nears $9.4 trillion.

That jalopy needs more than a tune-up.